International news

Egyptian election: Islamist vs. ex-Mubarak PM

SamMamudi

Reuters

Mohamed Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood party’s presidential candidate.

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — Egypt’s presidential run-off election will be a contest between the Muslim Brotherhood candidate and a former senior official in the government of deposed dictator Hosni Mubarak, according to media reports Saturday.

Mohammed Morsi, the candidate representing the Brotherhood, will face former Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq in the election on June 17.

Both men won about 25% of the vote of this week’s vote, according to the BBC, which cited Egyptian state media. The first round was contested by 13 candidates.

Reuters

Presidential candidate Ahmed Shafiq, who was a prime minister during deposed President Hosni Mubarak’s regime.

The outcome is a potential blow to many inside and outside of Egypt who hoped that Mubarak’s February 2011 ouster, after 30 years of autocratic rule, would lead to a more liberal Egypt.

Many moderates fear the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, while Shafiq, also a former air force general, built his campaign on a tough, law-and-order platform, said the New York Times.

The Muslim Brotherhood also won the plurality of the vote in Egypt’s parliamentary elections, held in December and January. The group’s Freedom and Justice Party won 47% of the chamber’s seats. In total, Islamist groups secured about 70% of parliamentary seats.

Egypt’s votes mirror those of the Tunisia, another country which overthrew a dictator during 2011’s Arab Spring, which saw the Islamist Nahda Party win the largest share of the seats in Tunisia’s parliamentary election.

Egypt’s uprising began on Jan. 25, 2011, with mass demonstrations across the country. It centered in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, where thousands camped out in defiance of authorities.

Domestic and international pressure grew for weeks until Mubarak resigned on Feb. 11, 2011, after ruling Egypt for 30 years.

He has since been arrested and tried on charges of corruption and of ordering the deaths of protesters. An Egyptian court reportedly is scheduled to announce its verdict on Friday. The 84-year-old Mubarak could be sentenced to death,

The relatively bloodless overthrow of such a long-ruling dictator was perhaps the greatest success of the Arab Spring, a term used to describe the popular uprisings in 2011 against rulers in Middle Eastern and North African nations.

Many of those uprisings haven’t been as successful. While Libyans, with the help of Western militaries, overthrew Moammar Gadhafi, the country is still in a state of near anarchy. In Bahrain and Syria, revolts have led to severe government clampdowns and many civilian deaths.

Since Mubarak’s departure, Egypt has been ruled by a military council, which had promised to smooth the transition to a constitutional democracy, but is seen by many as dragging its feet and playing to keep power.

Amid fears that Egyptians now face a choice between religious fundamentalism and a counterrevolution, both candidates have begun positioning themselves as moderates.

Getty Images

An official in Alexandria counts ballots for the presidential election.

Media reports stated that the Brotherhood had invited opposition figures to a meeting Saturday to try to form a broad front against the 70-year-old Shafiq, who the Brotherhood claim wants to recreate the previous regime.

The BBC quoted a Shafiq spokesman as saying his candidate’s campaign was about “the future” while the Brotherhood’s was about “an Islamic empire.”

The BBC suggested the pro-revolutionary vote was split between two candidates, with the secular leftist Hamdeen Sabahi third with just over 20% of the vote and Abdul Moneim Aboul Fotouh, a moderate Islamist who was formerly part of the Brotherhood, closely behind with roughly 19%.

The Wall Street Journal quoted a leader in the Revolutionary Youth Coalition, a loose grouping of activists, as saying that while some of its members will not vote in the run-off, others will vote for Morsi.

“We have a feeling that the revolution is getting defeated as every day passes,” Shadi Al Ghazali Harb told the Journal. “Sometimes we were defeated by the Islamists, now we’re defeated by the old regime.”

The Guardian reported that turnout in this week’s election was about 42%, lower than the parliamentary vote.

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